interpretation of Jesus' death: The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, likewise, holds the same substitutionist interpretation of Jesus' death: The Gospel of Peter is a docetic Apocryphal Gospel. The British biblical scholar F. F. Bruce, who served as Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the Victoria University of Manchester, wrote in a commentary about this text: John of Damascus, a Syrian Eastern Orthodox monk, Christian theologian, and apologist that lived under the Umayyad Caliphate, reported in his heresiological treatise De Haeresibus (8th century) the Islamic denial of Jesus' crucifixion and his alleged substitution on the cross, attributing the origin of these doctrines to Muhammad: In his scholarly monograph Gott ist Christus, der Sohn der Maria. Eine Studie zum Christusbild im Koran (1989, ), the German Roman Catholic theologian and professor of Religious studies states that Muhammad's distorted understanding of Jesus and the Christian faith, along with the misrepresentation of Christian beliefs about Jesus in the Quran and the hadith, were influenced by the non-Chalcedonian (heretical) Monophysite Christianity that prevailed at the time in the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula and further in Abyssinia, Egypt, and Syria. A similar hypothesis regarding the Gnostic Christian influence on Muhammad's beliefs about the crucifixion of Jesus has been proposed by Neal Robinson, senior lecturer of Religious studies at the College of St. Paul and St. Mary, in his scholarly monograph Christ in Islam and Christianity (1991, ). This docetic interpretation regarding Jesus' crucifixion was also shared by Manichaeans. Since Manichaeism was still prevailing in Arabia during the 6th century, just alike prohibition against wine and fasting rules, Islamic views on Jesus' death might have been influenced by it. However, while Zoroastrianism existed only in the eastern and southern Arabia, the existence of Manichaeism in Mecca in the 6th-7th century is denied as lacking historical support. Similar reservations regarding the appearance of Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Mazdakism in pre-Islamic Mecca are offered by Trompf & Mikkelsen et al. in their latest work (2018). Islamic interpretation of events Some Islamic scholars like Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi argue that Jesus was rescued but was given death by God before he was ascended bodily as God never allows His messengers to be dishonored, even their dead bodies. Thomas McElwain states that the context of the verse is clearly within the discussion of Jewish ridicule of Christians, not in context of whether or not Jesus died. He continues